Screen splitting/tearing (M17x R3 6990m/HD3000)

Hello Folks

Recently encountered a problem. Was on the 13.11 beta 9.2, playing LoL on my dGPU, suddenly a quarter of my screen to the right was shown on the left and the 75% from the left, moved to the right.

Basically the same this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so58XQEXckM

Although mine becomes really extreme, moving both from left to right and up and down several times per second. It usually ends in a colored/textured screen which may or may not persist for a couple of seconds, some more moving and another colored/textured screen which remains for 4-5 seconds before the entire computer crashes, keeping that last frame.

Two of the frames are: wide white vertical line, thin black, thin white, thin black, repeat, or medium blue, medium black repeat, for the entire screen. Once it just gave me a kind of bluish/greenish muck color after only moving once, crashing within 2 seconds.

Read on some forums that it is likely the video ram that is failing?

Running on standard settings, happens on both external monitor (HDMI->DVI) and its own screen. If I switch to iGPU nothing happens. Moving usually starts within 5 minutes of some intensive 3D imaging, like games or high quality 3D plots.

Hope someone has heard of this and can confirm/deny that it is the card.

Have tried upgrading drivers to beta 9.4. Reinstalling drivers going back to Dells 11.5 (2011, original drivers). Nothing changes.

Thanks


TL;DR: Screen is splitting, moving around; Confirm/deny failing VRAM?

 

Hi

I am having that exact same issue. I was even playing LoL when it happened! Have you gotten this resolved yet at all? And which forums did you go to? So far I have only found your post citing the same issue I am currently having.

Please any info you could give me would be absolutely essential.

Thanks a lot,
Chris

 

Nope =(

As for which forums I found they weren't that informative except for the one that mentioned that it might be the VRAM going bad. Hoping some guru from NBR passes through and gives a clue.

 

Have you tried a clean install of Windows with the DELL drivers only ? Or performing a clean install of the video drivers?

 

I have not tried a full clean install after the crashes began, but when I mentioned that I went back to the stock drivers it was after a full clean (safe mode, device manager uninstall + delete, driver sweeper) of the other driver.

I reinstalled the computer back in September and have since only done the following to my drivers. Dell new drivers (12.5?) (Issues) -> Dell stock (11.5) -> Amd 13.11b8 (issues) -> 13.11b9 (crashes began) -> full clean -> Dell stock 11.5 (still crashing).

Before reinstalling I have installed, repaired and uninstalled 20 different drivers both with and without sweeping without any problems at all, even downgrading multiple times, so drivers shouldn't be the problem.

Issues with Dell 12.5/6 and beta8 was primarily the computer being unable to turn on the screen after sleep.

Sorry for the late reply but apparently my notifications aren't set up correctly.

The computer does have a repair history. Dpc latency, repair (replaced mb with faulty), new GPU, not fixed, new mb, another faulty mb, new mb, everything fixed. All this was within 6 months of purchase so has been running solidly (except random switching performance issues) for just above a year. Switching issues was when going from Intel to Amd and performance being better than Intel but worse than Amd, fixed by switching back and forth or restarting on Amd.

 

Alright.

I have been in contact with Alienware during this week over Facebook and can confirm that it is indeed the VRAM failing if reinstalling the computer does not help (cleaning possible driver fragments).

Will contact my warranty provider and see what happens.

 

Alright. Ill wait to see what the next option is. While i do know the basic parts of a pc, how would you go tackling the Vram issue?

 

I was lucky as I still had warranty on it, so it was repaired for free start january.

If you have to do it yourself you need a new graphics card and install. There are multiple guides available that show how to, although the 6990m isn't cheap, so it if money is tight then you probably have to downgrade, or wait.